“Think we’ll make Laughlin tonight?” he asks me.
“We’d be pushing it. We got off to a late start, so we wouldn’t get there till midnight.” I start to pump the gas.
Ben gets out of the car and starts squegeeing the windows. “We might as well push through. I’m all caught up on my sleep now. How long was I out for?”
“Two hundred and fifty miles.”
“So we can make it by tonight. I’ll take over.”
I stop squeezing. The pump goes silent.
“What?” Ben asks. He glances at the California map in my other hand. “Did you change your mind?”
I shake my head. I didn’t. I haven’t. I still need to do this. To see it through. But we’re close. I mean, we’re not that close. We’re three hundred miles away. And this might not be the right address, or the current one. Harry said he’d moved around a lot. But three hundred miles away is as close as I’ve been in a long time.
“When do you have to be back by?” I ask.
Ben scrapes a moth off the windshield, then shrugs.
“I might want to take a detour.”
“Detour? Where to?”
“Truckee. It’s in California, near Reno.”
“What’s in Truckee?”
If anyone will understand, it will be Ben. “My father.”
34
By ten o’clock, we are climbing high up into the Sierra Nevada mountains, getting stuck behind motor homes and pickup trucks hauling huge motorboats. Ben’s been driving for six hours straight. The car needs gas again, and we need to figure out a place to stay, but I want to push forward, to get there.
“We probably should stop sooner rather than later,” Ben says.
“But we’re not there yet.”
“Truckee is right outside of Lake Tahoe. It’s summer. Places will be full. We’re better off in Reno. Also, if we stay at a casino hotel, it’s gonna be cheaper.”
“Oh, right.” Hotels. Last night I didn’t have to think about that.
Downtown Reno is garish. Once we pass through the center, with all the big casinos, their marquees advertising bands that were huge in Tricia’s day, it turns depressing: dilapidated motels advertising nickel slots and $3.99 steak breakfasts.
We choose one of the crummy motels. “How much for the room?” Ben asks.
The rheumy-eyed guy behind the counter reminds me of Mr. Purdue. “Sixty dollars. Checkout’s at eleven.”
“I’ll give you eighty bucks for two rooms and we’ll be out by nine.” I plunk down the twenties on the counter. The guy looks at my chest. Ben frowns. The guy crumples the money in his spidery hands, slides over two keys.
Ben pulls out his wallet and starts to hand me some cash, but I wave it away. “It’s on me.”
We walk back to the Jetta in silence, its engine still ticking from the long drive today. It has a bigger one tomorrow. I grab my bag and point toward my room at the opposite end of the complex from his. “I’ll meet you back at the car at nine.”
“Tomorrow’s Monday,” Ben points out. “Maybe earlier’s better. In case he goes to work. You don’t want to lose the day.”